Hamilton City Council Chief Executive Lance Vervoort has announced changes at the top table to help achieve cost savings targets.

Last month, as part of Council’s Long-Term Plan deliberations, Elected Members directed Vervoort to find $1.4 million of staff savings per year. Part of this will be achieved through streamlining Vervoort’s leadership team and the departure of Business Services General Manager David Bryant.

Vervoort said once he shared the intent to review his leadership team, Bryant had put forward a suggestion to restructure the Business Services Group which includes Council’s finance, governance, fleet and digital services functions.

“Essentially, Davidhasrecommended himself out of a job. I’ve taken his recommendationand made cuts at a very senior level.”

Vervoort said rather than replacing Bryant oran existing vacant financial director role, he will appoint a Chief Financial Officerto lead Council’s finance function.The governance, fleet and digital services teams will move to other parts of the organisation.

Bryant will leave Council at the end of October.

“David has been an integral part of Council’s leadership team since the beginning of 2016 and I thank him for his dedication and commitment to our organisation.”

Further savings will be achieved through disestablishing vacant roles and fixed-term contracts. Thegraduate recruitment programme, which normally employsseven to eightnew graduates each year, has also been cut, meaning no new graduates will be taken into the programme.

"Cutting the graduate programme was a tough decision, but my priority is to retain our current staff rather than bringing in new graduates at this time."

The $1.4 million savings target follows $7 million of staff savings completed by Vervoort earlier this year.

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